Search the Community

Hi friends, a question, with some preface: I started to develop an interest in Dzogchen a little more than a year ago. I'd been doing silent, objectless meditation for some time, and being without any teacher I was starting to worry if I was falling into what Chan masters sometimes refer to as a "cavern with ghosts," i.e. oblivion without illumination. I realized that Dzogchen offered more of a structure than I was able to find in books of Zen, Taoist medication (Golden Flower) or even apophatic prayer (Plotinus, Dionysus, Eckart, etc). Now I don't want to get into a long debate about whether/ to what degree Dzogchen leads to the same thing as the other traditions (I've seen enough of that on DW). Suffice it to say that I'm reasonably confident that it leads to where I want to go, being, according to its own view, not only the essence of Buddhadharma but also the essence of all religion/spiritual traditions. I had and have no interest in going through ngondro or otherwise getting involved in the structures and hierarchies of Tibetan Buddhism. I really just want a "nondual" contemplative practice that is detailed enough to provide decent guidelines for practice, but free from religious dogma. This is why I was happy to find out about ChNNR, who gave webcasts of the Direct Introduction, but didn't require formal "conversion" to Buddhism or samathas other than to maintain the View. And he was reportedly accessible without expecting or desiring "worshippers." Unfortunately, I was not aware of him until after his very last webcasts and before he passed away (sometime in July or August 2018). I'm not aware that the Dzogchen Community has appointed anyone to take on his role, and in any case my feelings towards that organization are somewhat ambivalent. With ChNNR gone, I'm uninclined to get involved with it. So the question is, are there any other Dzogchen (or Mahamudra) teachers who follow a similar perspective to ChNNR in offering DI via webcast and enabling practitioners to just follow the teachings without formal conversion/memberships/vows? Does anyone have recommendations? At this point I'm almost inclined to just get started and throw myself on the mercy of Heaven (as it were) as I feel this is rather holding me back. I would also be interested in hearing about alternative pathways via other traditions that I may have missed (in Taoism, for interest), i.e. accessible nondual meditative traditions or teachers that are not dependent upon taking a confessional perspective, cumbrous rules or arbitrary obedience, but which aim to lead the student to the essence of all traditions. Many thanks I'm advance!

Do you think your own thoughts? Or those offered by others? Between any two thoughts there is a magical place. A pregnant pause. The next thought could be any thought. There is no limit here. Predispositions perhaps, but no limit. The next thought could be any thought... even none. Awareness returns to this lately, so I chew it and share it here in case it intrigues. These are open questions, requiring and perhaps having no firm answers. Do you think your own thoughts? How many of your thoughts arise from within? How many arrive from without? From where do thoughts come? Does it matter? How many of them are repeats? Do you choose what you eat? Do you know from where you eat comes? How much of your food do you grow? And how much is brought to you by others? Awareness returning repeatedly to the parallels between what I eat to maintain health and vitality and what I allow my mind to eat and its effect on my inner world and experience of reality. If what I experience is my effective reality. Then thoughts are a major portion of this reality. Buddha speaks to it. What will I allow my mind to ruminate on... what will I feed it? Where will I go for and what will I do with, the thoughts that arise today?

I have been lately doing more meditation where i focus on my nose and feel the breath going in and out, and this helped me in increase my awareness and my ability to observe thoughts as they arise from in my daily life. whenever the thought arise, i notice it and once i notice it disappears, and i m left with a sense of peace and ease. Even though, i did notice how much some of the thought are compulsive and negative too. After the negative thoughts decreased, my mind has been flooding me with "positive" thoughts or more like sending me thoughts that i like or would prefer to engage in or think about, and they are nice, but at the end they are thoughts. But i m trying my best to not dwel. I was wondering if anyone has any idea about the state that i go into when i observe a thought and it disappears ? that state of peace and i call it state of bliss. Even though, that i m able to to observe the thought before getting triggered, would that also help me in releasing fears and problems in my life? do you suggest to continue with such practice? or to move forward with something to deepen it? And do you consider it, an escapism technique or enhance duality? Also do you suggest any book, youtube video or so on that practice to understand it more? Thank you

Do you think that nothing in life is static and everything is relative? In other words, if you dnt believe in chi/energy, you won't feel it. It could be that the belief is what creates our own reality, what we feel, see, hear, touch, smell, taste. And nothing really exist... we just inherited genetically and got taught beliefs that makes our own reality and put us with people with same of those beliefs that reinforce them and thus lead to make it a very real reality. Nd could be that the chakras, energy/chi, meridians...etc just another packaged reality, that we can choose to believe in out of many other realities, all is real but nothing really exist? Are there some static stuff in the world? That foes beyond all possible realities? Or could a majority belief be made a a static to all other possible realities? Does nothing really exist.. because all realities cancel each others out and what is left is emptiness or just another belief? thank you

Here's a little contemplative exercise which I think may be helpful for those of you who are currently materialistic in your outlook (meaning, you believe in some objective reality, unbending rules of physics, a universe that exist outside your mind, the whole shebang), but who are either leaning toward or are curious about a less materialistic outlook. This is a personal, intimate exercise, so purely intellectual analysis is not interesting or useful here. First produce what you consider a physical effect. For example, maybe move your arm around for a bit. And pay attention to how everything feels. An arm is something that follows laws of physics according to convention. So for example, you cannot accelerate your arm faster than the speed of light, and you must overcome inertia of the arm to move it, and you have to resist the pull of gravity, and so on. This is why we might say an arm is a physical object. Paying huge amount of careful attention, in a calm, cool and collected contemplative frame of mind, move your arm about feeling everything as carefully as possible. Or perform something else that you consider to be a physical effect, like maybe tense up your tongue or something, the idea is the same. Second, produce what you might consider a non-physical effect. Most of the committed materialists rail against fantasy and magical thinking. So that means materialists would consider something like daydreaming or fantasizing to be a non-physical effect. It's private and cannot be observed by others, where if a third party were to tap the brain, even brain waves are not the same thing as the qualities of your fantasies... so if you imagine a juicy apple, there are no juicy brainwaves, they're just numerical frequencies, and juiciness of an imaginary apple is a private quality that's not possible to experience for an outsider first hand. Also imaginary apples do not abide by rules of physics. They don't need to resist gravity. They can move around faster than light, and so on. Because objects of imagination do not have to follow rules of physics, we can consider them non-physical effects. As well we can consider them purely subjective effects vs moving an arm which has a subjective and a supposedly objective side to it. So engage for a little while in producing non-physical effects and like before, pay very very careful attention to what's happening and how it is happening. Now ask yourself some questions about the causal context which gives rise to these effects! So possible considerations might be: Am I using my brain to move my arm? (physical cause to physical effect) Am I using my immaterial mind to move my imaginary apple around? (non-physical cause to non-physical effect) Am I using my brain to both move my arm and move my imaginary apple? (physical cause to both physical and non-physical effects) Am I using my immaterial mind to produce both physical and non-physical effects? (non-physical cause to both physical and non-physical effects) When you ask these questions, please experiment and feel, don't just intellectualize. Also, the point of these questions is to investigate causal context, so there is no need to limit yourself to just these. Instead any question that is relevant to investigating causal context should be investigated. Now ask yourself some follow ups: If you think that the cause is physical, ask yourself what physical parameters it has, and then how something that's bound by physical parameters can produce effects that are not bound by physical parameters. Don't just intellectualize. Move that imaginary apple around as you contemplate. Feel it, don't just think it. And ask yourself other questions in similar manner. Ask yourself if there is one causal context or two or some other arrangement. On what grounds would you think so? Again, don't just analyze intellectually. Move your arm around and move your imaginary apple around to feel everything first hand. If you think there are multiple separate contexts, is there something that unifies them? Can you move from one context to another deliberately if you think there are numerous contexts? Again, feel this out, don't just intellectualize. The point of this exercise is exploration and familiarization.

I'm a big music fanatic and work in the music business. I cherish world music and have been listening to it since the mid 80's. I'd like to start a music thread - find out what others listen to to relax or meditate. I use Spotify to listen to music nowadays - I pay the $10 so that I can take my playlists with me on my phone and iPad. It's free if you just want it on your PC. Here's a link to an album on Spotify that is fantastic: Joseph Tawadros – The Prophet (Music Inspired By the Poetry of Kahlil Gibran)